Yep, that’s right. It’s my birthday, but YOU get the presents! I have two gifts for which I’ll be drawing random winners. One of the items is a cross stitch kit and the other is a Weight Watchers cookbook.

Here are the rules for the giveaway:

1. Leave a comment to this post by no later than 6pm ET/3pm PT on Sunday, Feb. 22.
2. Indicate whether you want to be entered in the stitching drawing, the cookbook drawing, both, or neither if you’re not interested.
3. I will perform a random drawing using Random.org on Sunday evening.
4. Winners will be notified by email on Monday, Feb. 23.

Here are details of the items I’m offering in this giveaway (click to see larger view of each photo):

Liberty from Shepherd’s Bush. Kit includes 9″x9″ piece of 32-count linen, silk fibers, needle, button, and chart. This would make an adorable fob. The design size is 22 x 29 inches or 1.5″ x 2″ finished design size.

Best Eats cookbook from Weight Watchers. This cookbook is a collection of 140 recipes deemed favorites by Weight Watchers members, leaders, and online subscribers. All recipes include full nutritional information, so they could be used with a variety of different eating plans other than just Weight Watchers. Of course, they also include the Points information for those who are following the Weight Watchers plan. Examples of some of the included recipes are:

Spinach, Tomato & Feta Omelette
Creamy Asparagus Soup
Slow Cooker Chicken Cacciatore
Lemon-Herb Roasted Salmon
Country-Style Short Ribs with Horseradish Cream
Grilled Margherita Portobello Mushrooms
Lemon-Ginger String Beans
Apple-Streusel Cupcakes
Brownie Crunch

As far as my birthday plans go, if the weather holds and the rain stays away, I’ll be spending my day with Mickey over at Disneyland. After that, I’ll be meeting up with some friends for dinner and then heading over to the LNS for the Tuesday evening stitching group.

That’s it for me for now. I hope you all have a great day on my birthday. ;)

As this entry is being published, I should now be at sea on my cruise. I’m sure I’ll be eating good, so I thought I would post about one of my own recent cooking adventures.

I actually made this 2-3 weeks ago, but I don’t think I ever got around to blogging about it. This was a vegetarian mushroom etouffee that I made when a friend was here visiting from out of town.

I adapted it from a recipe I found on another blog. I skipped using oil to saute the mushrooms and opted to use a little broth instead to help reduce the fat & calories a bit. Other than that, I pretty much stuck to her recipe. Instead of serving it over the traditional white rice, I served it over a bit of bulgur in order to have a whole grain. I thought it turned out fabulously and I’ll definitely be making it again.

No time for a full blog entry, but I did want to at least post a photo of the No Worry Vegetarian Curry I made last night. The mix is available from Soup of Success.

More later!

Ok, so this really doesn’t qualify as gadgetry. It’s a full on appliance. It’s an amazing 1100 watts of micro-nuking power!! May I present …

my new GE microwave! (Click for larger view)

Yes, I’ve already piled it up with the normal stuff I keep on top of the microwave. For those curious, from left to right that includes a container of various bars/snacks, a bag of the curry mix I helped develop for Soup of Success, and my digital food scale.

I’ve been in desperate need of a new more powerful microwave for quite some time. I kept putting if off because I felt like I couldn’t justify it since my old tiny microwave still worked, it just wasn’t very powerful (600w). So, a dear friend hooked me up with the new zapper as a belated Christmas gift. I’ll be taking the old one by Goodwill (along with a bunch of clothes that are too big for me now) and donating it so it will hopefully find a new home with someone else.

It’s been quite some time since I’ve bought any appliance “gadgetry” for my kitchen other than a replacement/upgrade George Foreman Grill since my old one bit the dust. I’ve really been trying to stick with using just my cookware and such rather than buying a different gadget for every little thing. When one lives in a one-bedroom apartment with a teeny kitchen, believe me, this is a good plan!

Now, all that having been said, I just got what is probably one of the most frivolous kitchen gadgets I’ve ever purchased. I bought myself a Cuisinart Ice Cream/Frozen Yogurt/Sorbet maker. In the linguistic style of one of my favorite bloggers, a.k.a. MizFit, please to look at the pretty pictures:

Of course, even though this was an entirely frivolous purchase, I do have the best of intentions for making it. My goal is to make my own low-fat, low-sugar ice cream and frozen yogurt at home. Given what I normally spend at Golden Spoon, it won’t take too many batches to actually recoup my investment either.

A one quart container of frozen yogurt at Golden Spoon is $6.50. By my quick and rough estimation, I’ll be able to make 1.5 quarts in the Cuisinart for around $2 which means I’m getting 50% more at about 1/3rd of the cost. I like that math. Not only will I be saving money, but it will also be a lot healthier for me as well.

On the other hand, if the homemade low-cal, low-sugar ice cream is a flop, I hear the Cuisinart makes some really mean frozen adult beverages as well. I’ve already had a few visions of sipping strawberry daiquiris while sitting by the pool this summer. Hope springs eternal! ;)

I’ve got the internal container in the freezer already, so I hope to take it for a test run in the next day or two with a batch of pumpkin ice cream. I’ll be sure and post some pics of my experiment to let you know how it turned out.

Until then … peace out!

Ok, before anyone who knows me very well wonders what the heck I’m talking about, no, I didn’t secretly run out and adopt a child or anything like that. I’m referring to of a new food product on the market. ;)

Last year my friend Betsy asked me if I would be interested in helping develop a recipe for a vegetarian side dish using orzo as the base. It would be for the food business portion of Soup of Success, the job & life skills training program where she works. I think it’s an extremely worthwhile venture, so I told her I would give it a go.

Fast forward a few months and many different attempts later, I finally came up with something that I thought was a good possibility. I packed up and headed back to the midwest for a long weekend, so we could get together and tweak the recipe. A pinch of this and a pinch of that later, we had something that we all agreed was delicious!

Betsy took the recipe back to her organization and they began working on the process of converting a home cooking recipe into something that could be mass-produced. There was another round of a pinch of this, a pinch of that, and several tweaks along the way by various people, but it was finally ready for the public! So, I am now proud to present to you — No Worry Vegetarian Curry:

If any of you would like to give it a try, it can be mail ordered directly from Soup of Success. Since I know many of my blog readers are also concerned with following a healthy lifestyle, here is a closer view of the nutrition & ingredient information for this product (click image for larger view):

They also carry many other products including soup mixes, cookie mixes, dip/dressing mixes, etc. I’ve pretty much tried most of the products they carry and can recommend them all. A personal favorite is the Ruth’s Original Blend dip/dressing mix. It can be used in a variety of ways which makes it very appealing, in my opinion.

The women who participate in this program go through an intensive 5-month plan where they learn the necessary job & life skills to help them get off of, or avoid having to go on, public assistance. Part of that training includes working in the food business which plays an integral role in teaching them job skills which can help them find a job after graduating from the program. Profits from the food business are rolled back into the program to help keep it running.

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Later!

Woo hoo!! For the first time in more years than I care to remember, I actually LOST weight over Christmas week. I went to my Weight Watchers meeting this morning and I was down 2.4 pounds this week. I even had two holiday luncheons with which to contend this week and still managed to pull off a great loss! I guess that thing about mental rehearsing really works. Who knew?! ;)

I also thought I would share a few food pics. Since I live alone, I definitely didn’t have the big spread that most people enjoy on Christmas, but I was pretty happy with my holiday meal. I cooked up a couple of small ground turkey breast patties that I seasoned with a bit of salt, pepper, and rosemary. Along with that, I had a baked sweet potato (topped with brown sugar & cinnamon) and some peas with mushrooms & thyme. A little bit later in the afternoon, I had one of my pumpkin pie smoothies for dessert. Here are a couple of pics:

After I finished my meal, I settled in with some knitting for the rest of the day. I still have lots of the Noro Kureopatora yarn in my stash so I decided to whip up a pair of socks that I can wear around the house or with my Birkies. I’m more than half done with the first sock, so they are coming along nicely. The worst part about knitting socks is losing one’s motivation after the first sock is finished, so I’ll have to keep a close eye on myself to make sure I don’t end up with an orphan.

I know it looks like I have some holes in a few places, but I really don’t. There are some pretty nubby parts of the yarn that are a cream color, so that’s what you’re seeing.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday with their friends and family. Here’s to a safe, healthy, and happy 2009 for us all!

Bulgur!

I tried a new recipe today that I saw last week on Roni’s Green Lite Bites food blog. I will admit that I was a bit skeptical at first because I couldn’t quite imagine the flavors together, but I decided to give it a try though because I love pomegranate. I’m glad I did because it was wonderful! Here’s a pic:

The recipe is called Bulgur with Peas & Pomegranates. I know … I know … it sounds like an odd combination, even Roni admits that in the video on her site. Even so, this recipe is a keeper and I will definitely be making it again! The peas, soy sauce, and ginger definitely give it a flavor reminiscent of fried rice, but the pomegranate seeds give it an amazing sweet/tart twist that’s pleasantly unexpected. Another added bonus — the recipe is vegetarian/vegan-friendly.

Now, for the best part, the bulgur makes this recipe a much more healthful alternative to rice. It’s both lower in calories and higher in fiber than rice. It also cooks MUCH faster than brown rice (10-15 minutes vs. 40-45 minutes). This may very well become my new favorite grain.

For those of you like me who are on Weight Watchers, it’s a real points bargain as well. A cup of bulgur is only 2 points whereas a cup of brown rice is 4 points. It’s also included on the list of Filling Foods for the new Momentum program introduced last week.

This was my first time using bulgur, so I’m definitely going to have to play around with it a bit more to perfect my cooking technique. In a nutshell, you basically cook it similarly to rice using a ratio of 2 parts liquid to 1 part bulgur. I think I actually overcooked mine because it turned out a bit sticky. I’ve already been thinking of other recipes I make where I currently use brown rice and may be switching some of those over to bulgur as well.

I will say that I did have a bit of difficulty finding it at first. I checked a couple of supermarkets and they didn’t carry it. I also checked at Trader Joe’s and didn’t find it there either. I was finally able to find it in the bulk grains section at Henry’s Farmers Market (subsidiary of Wild Oats). If all else fails, it can always be purchased online as well, but from an environmental viewpoint, finding a local source is always better when possible.

I’ll close this post by saying there will be no race report for this morning’s planned race. I opted not to do my 5k race this morning after all. My plantar fasciitis has really been bothering me the past couple of days, so I decided it was best to let my foot win this round and stay off of it this morning. Instead, I headed over to the gym and put in 12 miles on the LifeCycle at the same time I should have been racing. So, even though I wasn’t able to be there on the starting line with my friend Darla, at least I was with her in spirit by working out at the same time.

Hope every is having a great weekend! Until next time …